SC1405
HIGH SPEED SYNCHRONOUS POWER
MOSFET SMART DRIVER
© 2000 SEMTECH CORP. 652 MITCHELL ROAD NEWBURY PARK CA 91320
March 14, 2000
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APPLICATION INFORMATION:
SC1405 is a high speed, smart dual MOSFET driver.
It is designed to drive Low Rds_On power MOSFET’s
with ultra-low rise/fall times and propagation delays.
As the switching frequencies of PWM controllers is in-
creased to reduce power supply and Class-D amplifier
volume and cost, fast rise and fall times are necessary
to minimize switching losses (TOP MOSFET) and re-
duce Dead-time (BOTTOM MOSFET). While Low
Rds_On MOSFET’s present a power saving in I2R
losses, the MOSFET’s die area is larger and thus the
effective input capacitance of the MOSFET is in-
creased. Often a 50% decrease in Rds_On more than
doubles the effective input gate charge, which must be
supplied by the driver. The Rds_On power savings
can be offset by the switching and dead-time losses
with a sub-optimum driver. While discrete solution can
achieve reasonable drive capability, implementing
shoot-through, programmable delay and other house-
keeping functions necessary for safe operation can be-
come cumbersome and costly. The SC1405 family of
parts presents a total solution for the high-speed, high
power density applications. Wide input supply range of
4.5V-25V allows use in battery powered applications,
new high voltage, distributed power servers as well as
Class-D amplifiers.
THEORY OF OPERATION
The control input (CO) to the SC1405 is typically sup-
plied by a PWM controller that regulates the power
supply output. (See Application Evaluation Schematic,
Figure 3). The timing diagram demonstrates the se-
quence of events by which the top and bottom drive
signals are applied. The shoot-through protection is
implemented by holding the bottom FET off until the
voltage at the phase node (intersection of top FET
source, the output inductor and the bottom FET drain)
has dropped below 1V. This assures that the top FET
has turned off and that a direct current path does not
exist between the input supply and ground, a condition
which both the top and bottom FET’s are on momen-
tarily. The top FET is also prevented from turning on
until the bottom FET is off. This time is internally set to
20ns (typical) and may be increased by adding a ca-
pacitor to the C-Delay pin. The delay is approximately
1ns/pf in addition to the internal 20ns delay. The exter-
nal capacitor may be needed if multiple High input ca-
pacitance MOSFET’s are used in parallel and the fall
time is substantially greater than 20ns.
It must be noted that increasing the dead-time by high
values of C-Delay capacitor will reduce efficiency since
the parallel Schottky or the bottom FET body diode will
have to conduct during dead-time.
LAYOUT GUIDELINES
As with any high speed , high current circuit, proper
layout is critical in achieving optimum performance of
the SC1405. The Evaluation board schematic (Refer
to figure 3) shows a four-phase synchronous design
with all surface mountable components.
While components connecting to C-Delay, OVP_S,
EN,S-MOD, DSPS_DR and PRDY are relatively non-
critical, tight placement and short,wide traces must be
used in layout of The Drives, DRN, and especially
PGND pin. The top gate driver supply voltage is pro-
vided by bootstrapping the +5V supply and adding it
the phase node voltage (DRN). Since the bootstrap
capacitor supplies the charge to the TOP gate, it must
be less than .5” away from the SC1405. Ceramic X7R
capacitors are a good choice for supply bypassing near
the chip. The Vcc pin capacitor must also be less than
.5” away from the SC1405. The ground node of this
capacitor, the SC1405 PGND pin and the Source of
the bottom FET must be very close to each other,
preferably with common PCB copper land with multiple
vias to the ground plane (if used). The parallel Schot-
tky must be physically next to the Bottom FETS Drain
and source. Any trace or lead inductance in these con-
nections will drive current way from the Schottky and
allow it to flow through the FET’s Body diode, thus re-
ducing efficiency.
PREVENTING INADVERTENT BOTTOM FET
TURN-ON
At high input voltages, (12V and greater) a fast turn-on
of the top FET creates a positive going spike on the
Bottom FET’s gate through the Miller capacitance,
Crss of the bottom FET. The voltage appearing on the
gate due to this spike is:
Vspike=Vin*crss/(Crass+ciss)
Where Ciss is the input gate capacitance of the bottom
FET. This is assuming that the impedance of the drive
path is too high compared to the instantaneous
impedance of the capacitors. (since dV/dT and thus
the effective frequency is very high). If the BG pin of
the SC1405 is very close to the bottom FET, Vspike
will be reduced depending on trace inductance, rate if
rise of current,etc.
While not shown in Figure 3, a capacitor may be added
from the gate of the Bottom FET to its source, prefer-